Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Sweden's Adorable Defense Preparations

In response to a perceived Russian threat, Sweden is readying its old network of nuclear bunkers. Do the Russians pose a serious threat, are Swedes just falling for the anti-Russian hype from America, or are they doing what many ruling classes do when faced with internal dissent: focusing attention on an outside enemy?

I went to a Big Ten university with a weak football program. (I realize that doesn't help narrow it down much.) Our school had a rival: Michigan. Muck Fichigan! went the rallying cry, and every year before the match people donned t-shirts proudly proclaiming Ann Arbor is a Whore! The peculiarity around all of this is that Michigan didn't perceive us to be their rival. No, their rival was Ohio State. There was something a bit nutty but simultaneously adorable about our fans getting all riled up for a game that the opponents just saw as a mundane W to be added on their path to the BCS.

Sweden thinks Russia is their rival, but what do Russians think of Sweden? Do they think about Sweden at all? Why would Putin want Sweden anyway, a country headed fast towards internal cataclysm? If I was a Swede I'd probably want Putin to come in and knock some sense into people. In fact, I wonder if that isn't the goal of Putin's aggressive posture to begin with: to toughen up his European neighbors before they become so weak they just give up their countries to foreigners, which would not play well to Russia's long-term security prospects. Putin talks routinely about the need for western nations and Russia to work in collaboration against threats to global civilization. (He doesn't say Islam, but that's what he means.)

At this point there is almost a hubris to Sweden pretending they are a real country that anyone outside of 3rd-world hellholes would want to invade. And even those refugees have to be bribed with generous state welfare benefits. Swedes perceive themselves as a humanitarian superstate, a cultural jewel that the crude Slavs would love to hold in their clutch. In reality they are merely engaging in scorched-earth tactics on a national scale to deprive any would-be invaders of any overall benefit. And could there possibly be any greater example of r-selected rabbitry (as described by AnonCon) than a nation who invites masses of foreigners to graze on their social services and responds to threats of predation by literally burrowing into the ground?